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Posts published in “Essays”

Expert Advice Re: Experts

You can take the loftiest and most confident predictions made by experts over the past few years, crumple them up, stuff them in a thimble, toss them into Lake Mendocino and not lose a square…

Rammellzzee, Come Home!

We saw her hanging from lamp posts all over Paris—one of those women from a 19th-century Japanese woodcut, her hair pinned up in a two-tiered bun, her kimono adorned with prints of branches bearing buds…

Remembering Vern Piver

I knew Vern Piver very well. The Editor mentioned him several times and commented on John DeSilva too. When I moved back to Fort Bragg from Redwood Valley, I got a call from a lady…

Rocky Mountain Higher (Part 2)

Breckenridge, Colorado is a gold rush town. Fortune hunters came first in 1859 for gold and then again in 1879 for silver and lead. Like all “rush” towns people were in a hurry to get…

Wasted Talent

August, 1990. One morning, towards the end of May, Dave came over to my desk and said, “Well, here’s the scoop of the year: I’ve got AIDS. I’ve given them three months’ notice.” Within a…

Proud Grief

June 28 A young friend’s band played at the Pride Parade in San Francisco today—their first paying gig! I didn’t share my memories with them. How could I convey the fear that pervaded the city…

In The Silent Musical Bunker

In front of the Horniman Museum in the leafy Forest Hill district of London stands a weathered Tlingit totem pole. It is loomed over by the museum’s squat-yet-somehow-also-lofty clocktower and regarded from behind with neo-medieval…

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